In a surprise move, eBay just announced that there will be no eBay Live next year. I haven’t read anyone else’s speculation on this but I have to admit is that my gut reaction is that this is a little odd.

First they change the entire executive staff, make huge sweeping changes that anger a lot of sellers, basically take a “Silly sellers! You’ll get used to it.” take when people raise concerns, changed their method of dealing with sellers from “The Power of All of Us” to “We Have the Power, You Just Have to Deal with it” and then cancel their yearly face-to-face time?

So is this just a marketing ploy to drive up attendance for this year’s eBay Live? Is the event too poorly attended that its not financially wise for them to do it every year? Why is Lorrie Norrington so much fun to say out loud?

Personally, I wasn’t planning to go to eBay Live this year. I went last year and, while I don’t agree with their changes I have been making them work and so far have been earning the full 15% discount since it was implemented so I feel like I don’t have a right to complain. . .yet. I actually only had one buyer try to extort feedback from me so far (for something really ludicrous, may I add) and I just sent her the link to the new feedback extortion policy and suddenly she just left positive feedback and let it drop.

In the workshops I have been to since this all went down, however, most of the eBay community is an angry mob about this and eBay staff, instead of listening and promising to work towards a compromise like they have always done in the past, is basically poo pooing all complaints and belittling the sellers. What upset me the most was that they go through the forums and delete out all the negative posts criticizing the new system so when you look at the archive, it looks like everyone was agreeing with them. I found this to be more upsetting than the changes themselves. (FYI, this is not a conspiracy theory. I actually watched this happen in a few workshops that I attended.)

But for me, I have a feeling that this year’s eBay Live will be less of the usual Ra-Rah eBay and more of an angry mob like in the forums which is why I opted out. I wonder if a lot of people are feeling the same way and not attending which is prompting them to rethink the entire event?

On the plus side, eBay Live 2010 will be in Orlando, FL which means that I will be there in spades since my parents own a house down there and we are Disney World season pass holders. So eBay can tick me off all it likes in the upcoming years and I will still be going 2010 no matter what.